1. Field of the Invention
The subject invention is generally related to methods for transmitting and receiving data via electronic transmission, and is specifically directed to a method for selecting the proper receiving protocol for transmitting data generated at one station to a remote station of unknown protocol.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
In recent years, the electronic creation and/or transmission and reception of data has exploded. The use of digital encoding, compression, transmission, decompression and decoding has made it possible to almost instantaneously transmit both visual and audio information to almost any location in the world. Examples of such applications include facsimile transmission of written or printed documents. For example, "fax" machines are now quite common, where an original document can be scanned and digitized, with the information representing the document being digitally transmitted of a phone line or the like to a compatible receiving "fax" machine at any location, simply by dialing the telephone address of the receiving machine. In the past, systems communicated only with like systems, using identical data formats and protocols at both the origination system and the destination system.
More recently, computer based systems have been used to convert various documents and data formats into a compatible format before transmission or to convert information, once received in one format to a desirable format at the receiving station. For example, it is now possible to create a document in Microsoft Word, or WordPerfect processing systems or the like and use on-board software to reformat the document into a Group III "fax" format without printing the document. The digitized document is converted into the proper format and transmitted via telephone line or other suitable transmission link to the receiving using the proper protocol station without having to first produce a hard document at the transmitting end. Likewise, documents may be "faxed" from a remote location to a receiving station and immediately converted into a suitable format, such as a MicroSoft Word or a WordPerfect format directly from the faxed data by using OCR techniques.
In such prior art systems, it is necessary to match the protocol and the data format used by both the transmitting station and the receiving station to assure they are compatible before the transmission begins. Typically, when the data source is a "fax" scanner and compression system, such as a Group III fax, and the receiving station is a compatible Group III fax machine, it is only necessary to dial the receiving Group III machine, and the data is transmitted, received, decoded, decompressed and printed as a hard document corresponding to the original document scanned at the transmitting station.
When the sending and receiving stations are of known but different types, a converter is required to place the data in the proper format for a receiving station before it can be transmitted. For example, if the file source is a digital camera for producing a digital visual image and it is desired to transmit data from the camera to a Group III fax machine, the raster video data produced by the camera will not be received by the Group III fax machine unless it is first reformatted in a Group III format then transmitted using the Group III fax protocol. While software is available to perform this task, there must be some intervention in the transmission process to first identify the format of the data and the protocol of the receiving station and then perform the proper conversion before transmission can take place.
As the use of electronic transmission becomes more widespread, and the variety of sending and receiving stations increases, it is not always possible to know in advance whether the sending and receiving stations are compatible. Further, it may be desirable to automatically send data to a plurality of stations which are not all using the same protocol and/or data formats.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a method for automatically identifying a remote station protocol and performing proper conversion of data format before transmission is initiated.